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Sharri Markson, a senior journalist at News Corp’s the Australian, has said security forces in Israel were “heavy-handed” when they briefly detained her during a press tour after she collected personal details of wounded Syrian fighters being secretly treated in a hospital.

Sources said the chief executive of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, stepped in to defuse the tense situation when Markson was questioned about breaking the hospital’s strict rules on protecting the identity of the 500 patients, some of whom are fighting in the Syrian war.

“The primary concern of the Israeli security personnel and hospital authorities was to protect the identities of the Syrian patients because disclosing their personal details would put them in danger,” Alhadeff told Guardian Australia.

“There was an unfortunate misunderstanding but the situation was quickly defused and resolved.”

Markson, who recently moved out of the role of media editor at the Australian, was on a media tour of Israel jointly organised by the Jewish board of deputies and the Australia/Israel and Jewish affairs council (AIJAC). The group of Australian journalists visited the Ziv Medical Centre in northern Israel on Thursday.

The editor of the Australian, Clive Mathieson, confirmed Markson had been involved in an incident at the hospital but he played down its seriousness. “There was a minor incident at the Ziv Medical Centre in northern Israel on Thursday,” Mathieson told Guardian Australia on Sunday night. “It was quickly resolved and any suggestion that Sharri would have endangered the foreign fighters by revealing their identities is completely rejected.”

Markson, who is back in Sydney, made a statement on Twitter. “The Syrian fighters gave me theirs too. Israeli security were a bit heavy-handed, demanding I delete the details from my phone and notebook,” she wrote.

“The Syrian fighters took my details to keep in touch with a journalist when they return to Syria, where they’re at war with Assad and Daesh.”

Also on the tour were the Sky News political reporter David Lipson; print editor of the Australian Financial Review, Aaron Patrick; federal politics editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, Bevan Shields; the Daily Telegraph deputy editor Ben English; and the Seven News journalist Alex Hart.

Markson’s stories filed from the trip have not acknowledged the funding of the tour.

Israel has treated 1,300 Syrians who have been injured in the war, 533 of them in the Ziv hospital.